


Charcuterie

by bombcollar



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Cannibalism, Food Metaphors, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: Adam and 9S have brunch together.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Charcuterie

“Nice of you to finally join us.”

There’s no boot-up procedures, no status in hacking space. He simply isn’t there one moment, and then he is. 9S opens his eyes.

Adam. He looks different from when they’d fought him and his brother in the alien craft, the tomb of the machines’ creators. Now he wears glasses, a white dress shirt, standing with his gloved fingers held to his chin in clinical curiosity. Wisteria blossoms dangle above them. A terrace. Spiraling vines. A garden, blooms of all variety surrounding the shaded nook. The sound of birds calling from the trees. Dappled sunlight falling on the long table that divides the two of them. 

The table is covered in food. So much of it the pale tablecloth is nearly obscured. Ribbons of animal flesh, marbled white and deep red, hunks of soft cheese, their gooey insides oozing onto platters of crispy bread and crackers, fanned salami slices glistening next to plump grapes, red and green and purple and gold, watermelon, peaches, apples, pears, multiple colors of olives. Amid nearly reeling from the sheer amount of information he had to take in, 9S realizes he doesn’t have his visor on, nor his uniform. He looks down at himself, now dressed in a simple black button-down and slacks.

Adam speaks again. “Do you like it? Humans were creatures of such decadence. Do you suppose this is what they’re eating right now, up in that moon base of theirs?”

Where was he? The last thing 9S remembered was having his flight unit knocked out of the air by that enormous aquatic machine. Something’s blocking him from running a self-diagnostic. “This isn’t real,” he murmurs. Adam must have brought him here somehow, captured his unmoored personal data as it floated in hacking space through the machine archives and placed them both in this simulation.

“Clever.” The machine nods, spreading his arms. “I’ve created this place based on data I gathered from old human archives. What fascinating lives they must have led. Some lived in comfort, while others suffered and died, perished in the cold or on the battlefield.” His sweeping gestures and the tone of his voice are just a little too earnest. 9S wonders if he’s been waiting to show this off to somebody. His own expression belies nothing. Adam goes on, claws folding together. “You’re wondering why I’ve brought you here. Please, help yourself. We’ll get to it very soon.”

9S glances over the spread. YoRHa units didn’t feel hunger. They didn’t need to eat, but command felt that sharing meals created a sense of camaraderie, and so the function was built in, in a limited fashion. Normally 9S would jump at a chance like this. Scanners uniquely possessed the ability to analyze the chemical makeup of substances by tasting them, so he’d eaten his fair share of leaves, strange mushrooms and bugs, but he doubted he’d learn anything from a convincing fake. Let alone something created by a machine. “No thanks.”

“Are you certain? Don’t you androids feel you deserve some sort of reward for putting up with this war? And you, you’ve been through so much…” Adam tsks. “It eats you up inside. I’ve seen the bite marks all over your personal data.”

“You don’t know _anything_ about me,” 9S snaps. “Let me out of here.”

The corner of Adam’s mouth quirks in a smile, as if he’d heard exactly what he wanted to. “I know _everything_ about you, my boy. You might be crafted in the shape of humanity, but you’re nothing but animals, slaves to your programming. You just can’t help yourselves.”

“Shut up.” 9S grips the edge of the table, threatening to overturn the entire overwrought banquet. “You machines can tell yourself whatever you want about us if it makes you feel better about killing us. It doesn’t make it true.”

“But it is.” Adam begins to approach. 9S jumps to his feet, knocking his chair over and reaching behind his back, but Cruel Oath is nowhere to be found. “Like a rat returning to a baited trap. You’re helpless to resist. You know it’s deadly but you gorge yourself every time, not realizing the cat is right around the corner.”

“I said shut UP!” 9S grabs the chair and hurls it at Adam, but it simply phases through him in a crackle of distorted pixels. It bounces on the lawn and vanishes, reappearing right where it had been. Adam waves a hand lazily and 9S is thrown back into his seat by an unseen force. He grunts and struggles, but invisible bonds hold him tight.

“You say you have free will,” the machine says, his voice soft, even sympathetic, “so why is it you choose to hurt her? She’s begged you, she’s tried everything, but you always end up back there, no matter what she does, and in the end she’s the one who’s there to put you down. Is that free will, to hurt the one who cares for you so dearly?”

9S stops thrashing for a moment to glare at Adam, lips peeling back from his gritted teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Adam knows it’s not the android’s fault, not fully. When you were born starving, you’d do anything to fill that void. They knew what they were doing to him, doing to _her_ , whenever they booted him back up after the last execution. 9S would always hunger for answers, and he would always find them, and she would always find _him_ before he got to the most tender morsels and broke the whole rotten thing wide open. Somewhere in that plastic soul of his, he knew it. He knew she was watching, coiled and ready to strike, and he didn’t care, because something stronger was calling to him, stronger than the fear of death.

The android is stubborn. It was useless, trying to toy with him when he refused to play along, but maybe they could wring a little more entertainment out of him yet. Adam sighs, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose a smidgen. “Let’s make a deal. You eat, and I’ll free you from this simulation. I worked very hard on this meal, so somebody’s got to appreciate it.”

9S slumps forward in the chair, finally wrenching his arms free from their invisible chains. Breathing hard, he scowls at Adam, then at the food in front of him. “Yeah, right.”

“Your friend is on her way right now, so I can only entertain you for a short while longer.” Adam gestures carelessly at the spread. “Choose wisely.”

There are almost too many choices, 9S feels sick to his nonexistent stomach at being forced to choose a single one. There are at least a dozen options just within his reach. Frosted pastries, crumbled goat cheese, fruits he’s only seen in grainy photographs… His hand hovers over an apple, but he’s eaten those before, albeit small and sour wild varieties, not ones that are brilliantly red and larger than both his fists together. Time is short, so he passes over it, grasping one of the ribbons of meat, sliced thin enough for sunlight to shine through.

“Prosciutto,” Adam remarks. “Not a bad choice. Those pigs were treated better than a good many humans.”

9S doesn’t comment on the trivia. He bites into the strip, tearing a chunk off. It’s chewy, highly savory, practically dissolving on his tongue.

“Enjoy it.” Adam’s smile is razor-thin. “It’s the closest thing to human contact you’ll ever know.”

The table has changed. 2B’s body lies across his place setting as if she’d been dropped unceremoniously, her head lolling carelessly over the side, eyes wide and glazed, staring upwards at nothing. Her torso has been split open, but her internals aren’t what they should be. Meat and bone where there ought to be metal. Her chest cracked, ribcage snapped open like desperate, grasping fingers of bone. Blood pools beneath her, soaking into the ivory tablecloth, running warm and syrupy into his lap, down his chin, his throat, bitter and metallic as oil. 9S holds her bare wrist in his hand, a strip of her skin trailing from her forearm to his mouth.

His eyes, wide and pale, meet Adam’s. Licking his lips, he swallows. Adam’s smug expression dissolves, something like fear flickering across his eyes. “What are you doing?”

9S brings her wrist back to his mouth and sinks his teeth in.

The simulation ends, and every part of him is wracked with pain.

* * *

Later. 2B carries him. His vital hydraulic fluid leaks sluggishly from his wounds, staining her uniform and leaving a trail of garnet footsteps.

“What happened in there?” she asks him softly.

9S leans his head against her shoulder, his breathing hoarse. Eventually, he answers. “…I don’t remember.”

**Author's Note:**

> Essentially this is meant to take the place of Adam taunting 9S with asterisks, timeline-wise.  
> I've always really loved the trope of the villain banquet. Adam might have bitten off more than he could chew with 9S, ha ha.  
> Food and eating are very fun and visceral themes to play with, as well as the animal symbolism. 9S is just an awful little raccoon man who can't keep his hands out of places they don't belong. There's more symbolism than that but you can figure that out for yourselves!  
> special thanks to my friend entro for ideas and proofreading.


End file.
